After
co-creating some of the most notable cartoon characters of all time at Warners
in the late 30s and early 40s (for Leon Schlesinger), Tex Avery moved to MGM Studios in 1941, where for
about thirteen years (from 1941 to 1954), he accelerated the pace and scope of animations and
adopted new characters: Adolf Wolf, Screwy Squirrel, a sexy red-headed beauty
named Red, and a sad, droopy-eyed, dead-panning basset hound named Droopy (see below).

Avery's first cartoon for MGM, the anti-German propagandist short Blitzwolf (1942) brought him his sole Oscar
nomination. It was a wartime semi-parody of Disney's earlier Three Little
Pigs (1933) with Adolf Wolf (a thinly-disguised Hitler, portrayed as "one big stinker") threatening to invade the state of Pigmania and the house of Sergeant
Pork (US).

Besides
Tom & Jerry (see below), the other biggest MGM cartoon character, Tex
Avery's most famous and long-lasting at the studio, was the meek, slow-moving and slow-talking
Droopy Dog. The emotionless, deadpan-voiced, yet stoic Droopy (known as "Happy Hound") made his nameless debut
in MGM's Dumb-Hounded (1943). His first line of dialogue was: "Hello all you happy people...you know what? I'm the hero." He finally received his proper name in his fifth
cartoon, Senor Droopy (1949). Drag-Along Droopy (1954) was one of the classic Droopy cartoons, a spoof on range wars between sheepherders (Droopy) and ranchers (the Wolf's "Bear Butte Ranch"), as was Dixieland Droopy (1954) - the first Droopy cartoon in Cinemascope. One Droopy Knight (1957) was nominated
for an Academy Award - the character's sole nomination (after Avery
left the studio).

Later cartoons for MGM included Avery's controversially-sexy version
of the well-known fairy tale Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) and Screwball
Squirrel (1944). [Tex Avery's work heavily influenced director Chuck Russell's The Mask (1994) featuring Jim Carrey as mild-mannered bank clerk Stanley
Ipkiss, who is obsessed with cartoons. When Stanley dons a magical mask, he
turns into an alter ego composed of Tex Avery-like cartoon characters - the
Wolf (including a famous double-take with his eyes popping out of his head
and a wolf whistle), the Tasmanian Devil (whirling like a tornado), and others.
He even re-enacts portions of a classic Avery cartoon that he earlier watched
on his VCR, Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), in the nightclub scene. All
special effects were compliments of George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic.]

Walter
Lantz, an early animator, and Charles Mintz (representing Universal
and boss Carl Laemmle), took over the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from
Walt Disney in 1928 - it was the first animated character for Universal Pictures. The resemblance of Oswald to its biggest competitor,
Mickey Mouse, was striking. Lantz made a series of black-and-white cartoons
from 1929 to 1935, featuring the rubber-limbed, long-eared rabbit, including
these early titles: Ozzie of the Circus (1929), Stage Stunt (1929), Stripes
and Stars (1929), Wicked West (1929), Nuts and Bolts (1929), Ice Man's Luck
(1929), Junegle Jingles (1929), Weary Willies (1929), Saucy Sausages (1929),
Race Riot (1929), Oil's Well (1929), Permanent Wave (1929), Cold Turkey (1929),
Amature Nite (1929), Snow Use (1929), Hurdy Gurdy (1929), and Nutty
Notes (1929).Mickey Rooney was the first to do the character's
voice. Lantz was noted for also making the first-ever Technicolor cartoon
- the opening animated sequence to the live-action The King of Jazz (1930).

Another
of Lantz' legendary creations was a new character - the red-headed, blue-bodied, long yellow-beaked, trouble-making
Woody Woodpecker, with his distinctive trademarked laugh ("Ha-Ha-Ha-HA-Ha" by
Mel Blanc) and voice (by Mel Blanc for the first four cartoons, and then by
Ben "Bugs" Hardaway until 1948, and thereafter by Lantz' own wife
Grace Stafford). Woody (looking slightly deranged and not like his later persona) first appeared in Lantz' Andy Panda cartoon Knock, Knock (1940) distributed by Universal Studios, in which he bedeviled the panda. The next year, the popular Woody became a starring character as "Woody Woodpecker" in The Cracked Nut (1941), and began to replace the waning Oswald the
Rabbit.

Over the next three decades, Lantz made about 200 six-minute
Woody cartoons. Woody's appearance and demeanor was somewhat softened in The Barber
of Seville (1944), but he still maintained his usually aggressive and slightly
sadistic, manic personality. A long-time adversary of Woody's, Wally Walrus, was
introduced in The Beach Nut (1944), the same year. Two Woody shorts were Oscar-nominees:

In 1948, the novelty
tune, The Woody Woodpecker Song (written by George Tibble, Ramey Idriess
and Danny Kaye) was released on record and became the #1 hit song (sung by
Kay Kyser). The song was put into the latest cartoon, Wet Blanket Policy
(1948) (with another new co-star arch-nemesis Buzz Buzzard) and was nominated
for an Oscar for Best Song (it lost to Buttons and Bows in The Paleface
(1948)). Young boys copied Woody's haircut, and fan clubs developed across
the country. In the late 50s, The Woody Woodpecker Show first appeared
on ABC-TV in 1957 , and led to further shows and syndication.

A less popular but distinctive Lantz cartoon character was
Chilly Willy - a penguin, who first appeared in 1953 in a cartoon titled appropriately, Chilly Willy (1953). Chilly's popularity soared when animator Tex Avery
joined the Lantz Studio the following year and directed Chilly's second and
third cartoons: I'm Cold (1954) and Academy Award-nominated The
Legend of Rock-a-bye Point (1955) for Best Short Subject Cartoon (it lost
to Speedy Gonzales (1935), a Warner Bros.' Merrie Melodies cartoon).
As with Woody, Chilly Willy cartoons appeared all the way until 1972 - the
last year of production.

Tom and Jerry:

In
their first full teaming together after first meeting at MGM and serving as co-directors in the studio's animation unit, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
created the cat and mouse Tom and Jerry series (clearly influenced
by the frenetic action in Tex Avery's work at Warners), comic adventures about
Tom - a gray mangy cat, and Jerry - a wisely innocent mouse. When the cartoon
series highlighting the love-hate relationship between the two animals was first introduced in 1940 with the 9-minute Puss
Gets the Boot (1940), Hanna and Barbera received their first Oscar nomination. In this first appearance of the characters, Tom was called 'Jasper' and the mouse had no name.

Over 100 cartoons from 1940 to 1958 featured the two cartoon
characters, and Hanna and Barbera were able to break Disney's Oscar monopoly
for award-winning cartoons. They won more Academy Awards than any other
cartoon series in history, except for Disney's Silly Symphonies. They
won Oscars for Best Short Subject: Cartoon for the following animated cartoons, all in the Tom and Jerry series:

Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943)

Mouse Trouble (1944)

Quiet, Please! (1945)

The Cat Concerto (1946)

The Little Orphan (1948)

The Two Mouseketeers (1951)

Johann Mouse (1952)

In The Cat Concerto (1946), Tom was a concert pianist, attempting to play Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 while Jerry the mouse was trying to sleep in the piano.
And in the last film Johann Mouse (1952), Jerry - the mouse, can't resist
waltzing when he hears music from the master of the house, Viennese composer
Johann Strauss. Tom, also a resident in the household of the Maestro, takes
piano lessons to keep Jerry dancing and entranced - so that he can snatch
him. One of their most famous cartoons was Mouse in Manhattan (1945) that featured a score by Scott Bradley (made up mostly of Louis Alter's "Manhattan
Serenade" later used in The Godfather (1972) and Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown's "Broadway Rhythm") and told about Jerry's
adventures in the big city.

Later, in a few famous sequences, Jerry the mouse danced with
Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh (1945) - the first instance of
the combination of live action and animation in a feature film. Tom and Jerry
also performed an underwater fantasy dance with Esther Williams in Dangerous
When Wet (1953). Famed animator Chuck Jones was assigned to produce new
episodes for Tom and Jerry cartoons in the 70s at MGM - but they had
lost their spunk and spirit by that time - and were ultimately unsuccessful.

The First Full-Length Animated Film:

The
earliest animated films that most people remember seeing are the later, more
sophisticated Disney feature films that contain exquisite detail, flowing
movements, gorgeous and rich color, enchanting characters, lovely musical
songs and tunes, and stories drawn with magical or mythological plots. The first, full-length animated film was Disney's classic Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) released on December 21, 1937, which took
four years to make and cost $1.5 million dollars. It was 1938's top moneymaker
at $8 million.

It was financed due in part to the success of Disney's earlier
animated short, The Three Little Pigs (1933). Although dubbed "Disney's
Folly" during the three-four year production of the musical animation, Disney
realized that he had to expand and alter the format of cartoons. He used a
multi-plane camera, first utilized in his animated, Oscar-winning Silly
Symphonies short, The Old Mill (1937) to create an illusion of
depth and movement. His version of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale was the second of its
kind - the first was a five-minute Snow White (1933) starring Betty
Boop (with an appearance by Cab Calloway). Disney's risk-taking paid off when
the film became a financial and critical success.

[It must be noted that another little-known but pioneering, oldest-surviving
feature-length animated film that can be verified (with silhouette animation techniques and color tinting) was released more than a decade earlier by German
film-maker and avante-garde artist Lotte Reiniger, The Adventures of Prince
Achmed (aka Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) (1926, Germ.), based on the stories from the Arabian Nights.]

Disney's Golden Age of Hollywood Animations in the 40s:

The
Golden Age of Hollywood cartoon comedy was in the late 1930s and 1940s.
The critically-praised Pinocchio (1940) released
on February 7, 1940 and based on Carlo Collodi's 1883 fable made a record
$2.6 million and became the highest-earning film of the year. This second
Disney animated feature also won two Oscars, for Best Original Score
and Best Song (When You Wish
Upon a Star). It was the rites of passage story of a wooden puppet
(with Tyrolean britches) that came alive. The good-intentioned but
naughty boy was accompanied by an ingenuous narrator/carpetbagger named
Jiminy Cricket who served as the boy's conscience (and sounded like
Benjamin Franklin). The ingenious animation used the multi-plane camera
technique to create an amazingly life-like animation.

Disney experimented with other milestone, ground-breaking
techniques that combined classical music and animation in seven separate episodes
in the film Fantasia (1940), released on November 12, 1940. The film, with
a production cost of more than $2 million (about four times more than an average
live-action picture), featured Mickey Mouse as the star of the picture in
Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the mouse's only appearance in a
feature cartoon.
It was the first film to be released in a multichannel stereo sound format called Fantasound - decades ahead of its time - requiring a special system devised for
playback, although it was rarely shown that way due to the expense (and the fact that only 6 theaters were equipped to play Fantasound).

Fantasia was the fullest expression of Disney's earlier
work on Silly Symphonies. [A sequel of sorts was released 60 years
later, originally in the IMAX format, Fantasia/2000 (1999), with new
interpretations of classical music (including Beethoven's Symphony No.
5, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance, Stravinsky's Firebird,
Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2 - and Gershwin's Rhapsody in
Blue), plus a replay of The Sorcerer's Apprentice.]

Other great classic Disney tales, animated features, and storybooks
in the 40s included:

Dumbo (1941) - the story of the baby elephant with
big flying ears, released on October 23, 1941; Best Song nominee (Baby
Mine) and Best Score Academy Award-winner

Bambi (1942) - the masterfully poetic tale of woodland
creatures and a deer, with the shattering scene of the killing of Bambi's
mother; released on August 9, 1942; three-time Academy Award nominee: Best
Song (Love is a Song), Best Score, Best Sound [Note: although the second Disney animated film to go into production, it ended up being
the fifth release, due to extensive time-consuming research conducted on
animals to make it appear exceedingly realistic]

Saludos Amigos (1943), released
on February 6, 1943; advertised as "Walt Disney Goes South American"
with the introduction of Joe Carioca, the Brazilian Jitterbird; three-time
Academy Award nominee: Best Sound, Best Score, and Best Song (Saludos
Amigos)

The Three Caballeros (1945), released on February
3, 1945; two-time Academy Award nominee: Best Sound and Best Score; in this animated and live-action combined film, Donald Duck danced with "Brazilian Girl" Aurora Miranda

Make Mine Music (1946), released on August 15, 1946;
a more modernized version of Fantasia (1940) with popular music by Benny Goodman, the Andrews Sisters, and Dinah Shore;
the anthology included the classic tales Casey at the Bat, and Peter
and the Wolf; also Blue Bayou, The Whale Who Wanted to Sing
at the Met, The Martins and the Coys, All the Cats Join In,
and Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet

The Song of the South (1946), released on November 12, 1946, was Disney's first live-action feature film, but also contained three major segments of animation; it was based upon Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus folk tales regarding Br'er Rabbit; due to extensive protests (mostly by the NAACP) over the stereotypical representations of blacks in the film and the romanticizing of slavery, the controversial film was never released on home video for US audiences; the film's hit song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" won the Academy Awards Oscar for Best Song

Fun and Fancy Free (1947), released on September
27, 1947; a combination of live-action and animation; included Mickey
and the Beanstalk

Melody Time (1948), released on May 27, 1948; included
animated shorts about two American folk heroes: Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill; the last of Disney's large collections of animated
shorts

So Dear to My Heart (1949), released on January
19, 1949; a live-action film with some animation, starring Burl Ives; an
Academy Award nominee for Best Song (Lavender Blue)

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), released
on October 5, 1949; included the two shorts: The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The 1950s: Disney's Golden Age of Animation (continued)

In the 50s, Disney released more animated features, including
the following full-length classics:

Cinderella (1950), released on February 15, 1950;
three-time Academy Award nominee: Best Score, Best Sound, Best Song (Bibbidy-Bobbidi-Boo)
[Cinderella has been widely regarded as the most re-made storyline
ever]

Alice in Wonderland (1951), released on July 28,
1951; the Disney adaptation of the Lewis Carroll classic; its failure at
the box-office offset the profits from the previous years' successful Cinderella

Peter Pan (1953), released on February 5, 1953;
Disney's version of James M. Barrie's story

Lady and the Tramp (1955),
released on June 16, 1955; Disney's first animated feature in CinemaScope

Sleeping Beauty (1959), released on January 29,
1959; also in widescreen format; Academy Award nominee: Best Score

In order, Lady and the Tramp (1955), Peter Pan (1953), and Cinderella (1950) were the top 3 grossing
films of the 50s. [Taking into account reissues and re-releases over the years
as well as the original releases, the order of these top-grossing animated
films of all time has been rearranged, placing Cinderella (1950) first,
followed by Lady and the Tramp (1955) and then Peter Pan (1953).]

Walt Disney achieved a milestone in the 1954 awards ceremony - as the individual
with the most Oscar wins (4) in a single year. He won the award in four
awards categories, including one film which was animated: Best Cartoon Short Subject: Toot, Whistle, Plunk and
Boom (1953).

UPA Productions - Columbia Studios:

Some who left Disney Studios around the time of the studio's
1941 strike later established United Productions of America (UPA),
a studio for cartoons distributed by Columbia. It was known for simplified, stylized
drawings of human characters in the Jolly Frolics cartoon series, such
as Gerald McBoing-Boing (first seen in the cartoon Gerald McBoing-Boing
(1951)) and the near-sighted Mister Magoo (with
voice by Jim Backus).

Mister Magoo's first cartoon was Ragtime Bear (1949) - also in the same series of Jolly Frolics cartoons. The first of the Mister Magoo series of cartoons was Spellbound Hound (1950).
Mister Magoo starred in UPA's first feature-length cartoon film, the
76-minute 1001 Arabian Nights (1959).

Jay Ward -- Crusader Rabbit and After:

Animator Jay Ward, working with Alexander Anderson, Jr (whose idea was first turned down at Terrytoon Studios), created the immensely-popular animated, serialized NBC-TV show Crusader Rabbit, through their new company Television Arts Productions. It was the first American animated series produced especially for television. The show originally aired from 1950 -1952 and also had a color version in 1957, with both Lucille Bliss and GeGe Pearson providing the voice of the Don Quixote-like title character. It told about knight-in-armor Crusader Rabbit and his tiger companion Rags, combatting nemesis Dudley Nightshade, with episodes ending in a cliffhanger. Ward went on to produce animated cartoon shows, such as The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show - composed of Rocky and His Friends (1959-1961) and The Bullwinkle Show (1961-1964), Hoppity Hooper (1964-1967), George of the Jungle (1967), and The Dudley Do-Right Show (1969-1970) about a Canadian Mountie. The only live-action TV comedy show that he produced was Fractured Flickers (1963).

Hanna and Barbera:

In the late 50s after their success with Tom and Jerry cartoons, Hanna-Barbera formed their own company. They were one of the earliest animation studios to become successful producing animated cartoon TV shows for television, but were often criticized for their crude, low-budget animations. They became responsible for the following cartoon shows, and their related spin-offs:

The Ruff 'n' Ready Show (1957-1960) - their first TV show

The Huckleberry Hound Show (1958-1962)

The Quick Draw McGraw Show (1959-1961)

The Yogi Bear Show (1961-1963)

The Flintstones (1960-1966) - loosely based upon the live-action sitcom The Honeymooners, also ABC-TV's first series to be televised in color

Top Cat (1961-1962)

The Jetsons (1962-1963)

Jonny Quest (1964-1965)

The Magilla Gorilla Show (1964-1967)

The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show (1965-67)

Scooby Doo (1969 and after)

Hong Kong Phooey (1974-1976)

Based upon some of these cartoon shows, they also produced feature-length films, such as the animated musicals Hey There, It's Yogi Bear! (1964) and The Man Called Flintstone (1966) - a James Bond spoof, the Star Trek-like Jetsons: The Movie (1990), and the live-action Scooby-Doo (2002) (with a sequel in 2004).

Cold War Era Propagandistic Animations:

One
of the most notorious propaganda films ever made, Duck and Cover (1951),
was aimed at school children. The 9-minute Civil Defense film used an animated
turtle named Bert to show children how to survive a nuclear explosion or atomic
attack by using a "duck and cover" technique under their desks.
Later, Bert became a cultural icon in the documentary The Atomic Cafe (1982),
and it was cleverly spoofed in Brad Bird's The Iron Giant (1999) with a cartoon
beaver. For its historical and cultural place within film history, it was
inducted into the National Film Registry in 2004.

Advanced Animation Techniques in the 50s and 60s:

Ray Harryhausen and Others

In
1949, inspired by the stop-motion work of Willis O'Brien in King
Kong (1933), Ray Harryhausen animated the stop-motion gorilla in Mighty
Joe Young (1949), although the work was mostly credited to O'Brien. This
was Harryhausen's first feature film for which he created stop-motion animation. His own distinctive brand of stop-motion animation was termed DynaMation - a process involving split-screen rear projection to insert the stop-motion characters into background live-action plates. He created the fantastic images in 15 films between 1953 and 1981, including:

Harryhausen's Films

Descriptions

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Warner Bros.' prehistoric fantasy - a pre-Godzilla monster story with a rhedosaurus threatening New York City

It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955)

about a giant radioactive squid-octopus (with only six arms instead of eight to save money) threatening San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge

Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956)

with flying
saucers that destroyed the US capital in the spectacular finale

20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)

with a threatening reptilian creature threatening
Italy

The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1959)

adapted from Jonathan Swift's novel about an adventurer who encountered the worlds of Lilliput, Brobdignag, and England

Mysterious Island (1961)

Jules Verne's oft-filmed tale about the ballooning journey of escaped convicts to an uncharted
island inhabited by a giant crab and a mysterious Captain Nemo of the Nautilus

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Harryhausen's best film, with screeching harpies, a giant metal warrior (a cross between the Colossus of Rhodes and a bronzed stone giant Talos man), a 7-headed hydra, and sword-wielding skeletons doing battle against Jason (Todd Armstrong)

The First Men in the Moon (1964)

the H.G. Wells' adaptation about a space trip to the lunar surface
(with an alien civilization) and back

One Million Years, BC (1966)

Harryhausen's most celebrated film, with Raquel Welch as a fur bikini-clad cavewoman, and a menagerie of prehistoric creatures

The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

about the unleashing of a giant, flesh-eating prehistoric monster unearthed by an archaeologist, that burns to death at a church altar in the fiery climax

Trog (1970)

a horror-monster film, noted as the last film of Joan Crawford

Sinbad Trilogy:

(1) The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

featuring Harryhausen's Dynamation process, including the rescue of a miniature princess (Kathryn Grant)
by handsome prince Sinbad (Kerwin Mathews) on his seventh voyage, a young genie
and many stop-motion animated figures (a giant horned Cyclops who spit-roasted a sailor, a dragon, a snake-woman,
and a sword-battling skeleton - the first of his skeletal warriors)

(2) The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)

featuring a 6-armed statue, a one-eyed centaur, and a flying Griffin

(3) Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

with three zomboids, a giant saber-toothed tiger, a horned prehistoric caveman named Troglodyte (Trog for short), three banshees, and Minoton (similar to the legendary Minotaur with a human body and bull's head) - among other creatures

Clash of the Titans (1981)

a mythological fantasy, with a memorable snake-haired Gorgon-Medusa, a Cyclops,
and the winged horse Pegasus. this was Ray Harryhausen's swan song - his last film as Special Effects producer

Ray Harryhausen's films, such as his best known work Jason and the Argonauts
(1963) with its skeletal warriors set-piece, perfected stop-motion animation.
By the time the 61 year-old Harryhausen had finished Clash of the Titans
(1981), he had worked on more than a dozen sci-fi and fantasy films with
stop-motion animation.

George Pal, the father of screen science fiction fantasy
films, artistically combined live acting cinematography, animation,
puppets (e.g., Puppetoons produced for Paramount in the 30s), and other
visual effects in films such as Tom Thumb (1958), the Cinerama-configured The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), and 7 Faces of
Dr. Lao (1963).

Animator-geniuses of recent years have used pixillation,
the frame by frame animation of live subjects or objects and human beings
by filming them incrementally in various fixed poses. Mary Poppins (1964) was a more recent, semi-animated kids musical with both live-action and animated
characters.

The best-known work of the Halas & Batchelor (husband and wife) animation
studios was the adult-themed and serious Animal Farm (1954), the first animated
color feature film made in England. All of the character's voices were provided by actor Maurice Denham. The allegorical tale, based on George
Orwell's 1945 satirical political novel, told of animals at Manor Farm who
were led by fascist pigs Napoleon and Snowball to rebelliously overthrow oppressive
Farmer Jones, take over the farm, and form a free, egalitarian socialist utopia.
The new society was to be based upon seven principles: 1. Whatever goes upon
two legs is an enemy. 2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a
friend. 3. No animal shall wear clothes. 4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol. 6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal. However, the animals would learn that some animals
were more equal than others. [After the success of the 'talking-animal' hit Babe (1995), the film was later remade as the live-action TNT-TV production, Animal Farm (1999). It featured creations of Jim Henson's Creature
Shop (where director John Stephenson was a veteran supervisor), animatronics
and computer animation.]

A classic family animation with similar animal characters,
although a-political, was Charlotte's Web (1973), adapted from E.B.
White's beloved tale about an intelligent spider (Charlotte, voiced by Debbie
Reynolds), a rat (Templeton, voiced by Paul Lynde), and a bashful, ill-fated
barnyard pig (Wilbur, voiced by Henry Gibson). It was noted for Charlotte's
sacrificial saving of Wilbur with web-spinning creations ("Some Pig"),
Wilbur's caring for Charlotte's egg sac and spiderlings upon her death, and
memorable songs including "Mother Earth and Father Time."

The magical puppetry of Jim Henson's Muppet characters have also charmed audiences, first with The Muppet Movie (1979), then followed by more adventures with Kermit, Miss Piggy, and
other delightful characters. [See section on Children's Films.]